In total agreement. Anyone can shave 1 to 2 percent of a budget.. In fact as you so rightly point out, we all were asked to do this in 2013. The thing that gets me is how Obama got away with raising a regressive tax like the payroll tax and didn't get slaughtered in the media for raising taxes on the poor and middle class.

And it's not even a real cut. It's merely a reduction to the increase.

Baseline Budgeting ensures that ALL budgets increase by a certain percentage every year automatically. This is the elephant in the room when it comes to discussing the budget. The dollar value of the increases will get bigger and bigger as each subsequent increase is a percentage of large budget.

So when you hear people whining about a 2% cut, the are actually whining that they won't get the usual X% increase.

GOOD!! If the program needs to maintain or increase then our representatives need to actively decide to increase funding. Funding should NOT be automatic.

They do and funding isn't automatic under the current system. That's why we have a government shutdown if no appropriation is passed by Congress and signed by the President (or repassed by Congressional supermajority over a Presidential veto.) Even so-called "non-discretionary" spending isn't automatic.

This is one of those "Lying with facts" things that needs more context to correctly understand.

The House of Representatives is currently controlled by a Republican majority, 232 (R) vs 200 (D). A simple majority is all that is required to pass any Bill in the House of Representatives, therefore, so long as the Republican caucus can keep its members in line, they can pass anything, no matter how much Democrats hate it, with no thought at all about compromise.

No, it is not lying with facts. I appreciate your adding context, but to pretend that the Democrats are resolved of their responsibility to put forth a budget proposal because of the possibility of being filibustered is propagandizing. It also ignores the fact that they didn't propose a budget when they controlled the Presidency, both houses of Congress, and had a virtual filibuster-proof majority. If they could get ObamaCare passed, then they could have passed a budget.

This is such a load of crap. The Democrats are using the excuse that unless they have a filibuster-proof majority, then they can't even think about passing a budget. They haven't even proposed a budget to see if it would be filibustered. How did all of the Senates before this Senate operate without filibuster-proof majorities? The Republicans would be glad for the Democrats to vote on a budget, as it would expose them (the Democrats). There is no reason to filibuster.

The republicans have been filibustering everything. And I don't mean a little more. An unprecedented, never before seen high by orders of magnitude more seen in modern history. They've taken what was a gentleman's agreement not to grind congress to a halt and have done exactly that.

This narrative that the Dems are being uncooperative is the sort mind-bending detachment from reality that proves that Republicans really are the fucking retards that mindlessly repeat wha

The Democrats are using the excuse that unless they have a filibuster-proof majority, then they can't even think about passing a budget.

A recent judicial nomination, by two Republican senators, had been blocked and sat for 263 days [whitehouse.gov], only to pass 93-0. While not technically a "filibuster", neither was the Hagel delay (wink, wink). We just also confirmed a judge after 300 days, and another guy's been waiting over 330.

When it comes to Senate filibusters, we are no longer playing with rational actors.

When I started looking a bit more closely at this, it isn't a cut at all. It is like you said...only a reduction in spending.

Even with sequestration, we're on schedule to spend more this year than last year, just what we need.

Obama got his tax increase....we all saw it in our paychecks in January. Why can't they start cutting...but in an INTELLIGENT manner?

*SIGH*, you know...we really need to just stop...sweep EVERYONE out of Washington, no one in office can come back to it, and start over. Maybe then we'd have a chance going forward for a bit without all the crap that is currently entrenched in DC.

Just start over with a whole new crowd with no one having seniority, no power clicks...etc. It is too bad that there was no periodic "clean the house" type provision in the Constitution where every few decades...whoosh, everyone there is out and must be replaced.

Just start over with a whole new crowd with no one having seniority, no power clicks...etc. It is too bad that there was no periodic "clean the house" type provision in the Constitution where every few decades...whoosh, everyone there is out and must be replaced.

I fully agree - and I agree with most posts above you in the thread. It would be awesome if we could throw EVERYONE out, say, once every 12 years or so and start fresh. But the people who would vote for that are the people who would be thrown out, so of course it's never gonna happen. Shameful...

My hope is that the sequester "happens", its terrible, and everyone then responds by voting folks out en masse for failing to figure out the difficult task of "how do I legislate like a grown person".

The whole "lets all try to orchestrate drama and then blame the other person" thing has gotten old, and im kind of glad the sequester bluff has been "called" so to speak. Yes, I know Senate, its the Republicans' faults. Yes, House, I know its the Democrats' faults. Somehow 200 years of legislators have manag

I would agree, except for one problem. Most of these people were voted in in the first place. Which means if you sweep the lot out, guess what happens? The same caliber of dufus is just going to be voted back in again.

Any given population gets the government they deserve. And a massive percentage of the US population are mindboggling ignorant about how the world works, think that their ignorant opinions should have equal value to those provided by actual experts in their respected fields, and think that

And it's not even a real cut. It's merely a reduction to the increase.

It is, in fact, a real cut to the currently-appropriated spending and the current spending rate. While it is often the case that reductions in projected increases are sold as "cuts" in government budgets, this is not one of the cases.

Baseline Budgeting ensures that ALL budgets increase by a certain percentage every year automatically.

The sequester has nothing to do with baseline budgeting, it has to do with cuts to funds that are already appropriated for the current period.

Also, nothing in the federal budget happens automatically. If an appropriation isn't passed for each year, there are no funds, period, full stop. Baseline budgeting has to do with how budget proposals are drafted and presented, it doesn't mean that if no legislative action is taken an appropriation automatically remains in effect indefinitely.

The Budgeting process is largely on automatic pilot. The proposed budget is generated with the baseline increases included and then attempts to change it are met with howls of "draconian cuts!" and "taking food from children and elderly".

Which is why he has to make the cut hurt. Instead of minimizing waste (reducing travel budgets, etc.) he's going to cut positions with that 1%...

Actually, the sequester mechanism, when it was passed by Congress and signed by the President as part of a short-term funding agreement was designed by both sides to be painful because both sides wanted it that way so that it would be a disincentive to the other side to refuse to compromise on an actual budget agreement that would deal with specifics of addressing budget priorities going forward.

In a sense, it was a version of mutually-assured destruction that went into effect if bilateral action wasn't taken to avert it.

The problem with this is MAD may work when you have to take an active step to trigger it, it doesn't work as well when you have to have to jointly avoid it, because its easy to convince yourself that the other side will back down if you wait a little longer, so you don't have to compromise.

In addition, both sides can try to spin the situation as "We tried our best to avoid this but THE_OTHER_POLITICAL_PARTY wouldn't seriously negotiate with us. It's all the fault of THE_OTHER_POLITICAL_PARTY."

The thing that gets me is how Obama got away with raising a regressive tax like the payroll tax and didn't get slaughtered in the media for raising taxes on the poor and middle class.

Nice revisionist history there. The temporary payroll tax reduction act was allowed to expire by the dysfunctional house of representatives. They used it as a bargaining chip in their attempt to renew the temporary tax relief package that directly benefits the top 1% of income earners. Of course hypocrisy surfaced after the "fiscal conservatives" used the need to reduce the budget deficit as an excuse for letting this tax reduction expire even though these same individuals are still actively pushing to make their own temporary tax relief act permanent.

I single out one lobbyist in particular - Grover Norquist. True to form, he actually argued that the expiration of the payroll relief bill was NOT a tax increase, whereas the expiration of the Bush tax cut for the wealthy is undeniably a tax increase.

It takes some balls to place blame on solely Obama for increasing the payroll tax despite the fact that there are overwhelming amount of written and recorded documentation that shows it was the opposition at fault.

He isn't saying it's okay for Obama to do stupid things, he's saying Obama didn't do the stupid things he's being accused of doing. Obama passed a temporary tax cut. That tax cut expired. Failing to permanently extend a temporary tax cut is not the same thing as raising taxes. That's the argument. And fuck the guy who tried to smear Obama with that brush.

GP is casting blame at the people he thinks truly deserve to be blamed, ie Grover Norquist.

And the blame should fall squarely on the GOP's shoulders. This is a crisis of their making, this is their sequester. Obama agreed to it because he's been willing to compromise, as he has endlessly showed us, it's the GOP that has refused to budge. They constantly refused to even write a bill or identify what they wanted to be cut. They didn't even put a bill up for a vote in the GOP-controlled House. This is entirely of the GOP's making, and they like it that way, because they have no interest in bipartisanship, only reducing taxes and forcing the Democrats to take the blame for the inevitably necessary spending cuts.

It is not 1% less. They are actually just not increasing as much as they'd like to. It is not a cut in spending. Damn I miss Bill Clinton. At least he was just fucking interns instead of the entire country.

Just fyi [slashdot.org], the scientist whose budgets are being cut agree with you [nature.com]. We cannot adequately fund science, education, and social services while gratuitously financing gratuitous military spending and asinine wars on drugs, brown people, etc.

We should first cut it all by 10% per year for a few years, make all those federal contractors show declining profits despite their lobbyists efforts. We should then evaluate which government financed industries tightened their belts but still did the work and which just pocketed the same amount while cutting real work. Any industries in the second category should continue getting cut.

Just fyi, the scientist whose budgets are being cut agree with you. We cannot adequately fund science, education, and social services while gratuitously financing gratuitous military spending and asinine wars on drugs, brown people, etc.

We should first cut it all by 10% per year for a few years, make all those federal contractors show declining profits despite their lobbyists efforts. We should then evaluate which government financed industries tightened their belts but still did the work and which just

Oh noes, payments will be delayed. Engage eyeroll. Folks, payments to contractors and grantees from the federal government are usually late. The timeliness is never predictable, a factor that's programmed in to the cost structure for anyone who does business with the federal government. More tardiness will have no impact whatsoever.

Ever notice that the only things they ever cut are the services, never the wasted people who do nothing useful? It's blackmail, pure and simple for keeping the status quo that benefits useless paper pushers.

According to the CBO, the cuts will have no signifigant effect on the economy. But the Rise is Social security taxes deffinately will. They also say that:"We project that debt held by the public will reach 76 percent of GDP this year, the largest percentage since 1950. And, under current laws, we project that debt in 2023 will be 77 percent of GDP—far higher than the 39 percent average seen over the past 40 years—and will be on an upward path.

First, high debt means that the crowding out of capital investment will be greater, that lawmakers will have less flexibility to use tax and spending policies to respond to unexpected challenges (like a recession or war), and that there will be a heightened risk of a fiscal crisis in which the government would be unable to borrow at affordable interest rates. "http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43943 [cbo.gov]

etc... etc...We HAVE to cut spending. Period. If the only way to do it is to let this sequestration process proceed, then fine.

There isn't a single Federal department that will not spend more money this year even with the sequester than they spent last year. The $85B in cuts from the sequester is somehow magical: the whole government — every basic function — apparently falls apart without this sliver of money (in a $3.6T overall spending plan), again noting that they will still spend more money than last year, even with the sequester. Amazing, really.

Wait! You don't think.... No! Surely politicians wouldn't play games with government services for political gain? Say it isn't so!

Fine. There is one department whose budget will be a tiny bit less. Do you argue with the basic premise that the government will, overall, spend more money than last year even after the sequester, and that this is hardly some epic disaster?

In reality, these "cuts" (which aren't actually even real cuts as noted above) will have almost no effect on the population as a whole. But everything possible will be done to spin this like it is an epic disaster so that the cuts are reversed, spending is even increased, and taxes are raised yet again.

Children will go hungry! Old people will die! Canada will probably invade! Dogs and Cats living together! MASS HYSTERIA!

I eagerly await the proof for Dr. Hypebole's statement that the loss of less than 6% of funding (assuming your 2% inflation estimate is correct, which it isn't) will "set back medical science for a generation".

There isn't a single Federal department that will not spend more money this year even with the sequester than they spent last year. The $85B in cuts from the sequester is somehow magical: the whole government â" every basic function â" apparently falls apart without this sliver of money (in a $3.6T overall spending plan), again noting that they will still spend more money than last year, even with the sequester. Amazing, really.

Your point being that.... nothing bad is going to happen?Because if that's what you're trying to say, you might as well come right out with it.

I think you're missing the fact that the sequester isn't x% off the total budget. It's x% off of almost every item in the budget.How long is your landlord going to accept 95% of your rent bill?How long are your pets going to eat 95% of their regular diet?How long are you going to spend 95% of the maintanence required for your car?

Technically, it's not at the PPA level. It's a level higher, so no, it's not every program in the budget, actually. There are some that will not have that cover (because they're small), but most of the cuts allow for a lot more flexibility in how they are cut than it would at first appear. As it happens, the President is using that flexibility to make the cuts as bad as possible, rather than as easy as possible. So I'm saying that nothing bad must happen, but that doesn't mean that nothing bad will happen.

"I think you're missing the fact that the sequester isn't x% off the total budget. It's x% off of almost every item in the budget.How long is your landlord going to accept 95% of your rent bill?How long are your pets going to eat 95% of their regular diet?How long are you going to spend 95% of the maintanence required for your car?"

Wrong questions to ask. The correct questions to ask are:

Since you spend more than you make:

How long can you pay your rent using your credit cards?How long can you buy pet food before your credit runs out?How long can you maintain your before your credit runs out?

Republicans. Seriously, are we this short-sighted? When Clinton was president the budget deficit was a big deal too. Then what did Clinton do? He fucking balanced the budget. We could have started paying down the debt then and there. Gore ran on a platform of doing just that. Bush ran on a platform of trillion-dollar tax cuts, increased spending, and wars in the middle east. Guess who people voted for, and guess who ran up the bill? And why was this never an issue when Bush was in office, running up the debt? Because as Cheney said, "Deficits don't matter." At least not when Republicans are running the place and they get to set their own agenda. But if a Democrat gets in office, they will do everything they can to derail their mandate by screaming about deficits, even though it's the least important issue and completely counterproductive.

Don't blame Democrats, this is 100% a Republican-created crisis. Republicans are as fiscally-irresponsible as they come.

Raise taxes back to 1990s levels and we would not have any problems with debt. When Clinton left office, he had a multi trillion dollar surplus in the federal budget. When Bush came into office it took his administration less than a year to turn that into multi trillion dollar deficits.

When Clinton left office, he had a multi trillion dollar surplus in the federal budget. When Bush came into office it took his administration less than a year to turn that into multi trillion dollar deficits.

A couple of things:

1) Contrary to rumour, Clinton did not create a surplus (much less a trillion dollar surplus) in the budget. If you bother to check, National Debt went UP every single year he was President.

Come on idiots, (not the poster, who probably just made a typo, but the mods who sent it up to +5) -- the TOTAL cumulative government debt is about $14 trillion. The deficit for this year will be in the neighborhood (probably under) of $1 trillion, still a large number but we need to keep the facts straight in these discussions.

A less than 3% cut in funding is going to set medical science back a generation? By that logic, if we were to increase funding by 3% (as we have more than done) we should have seen a generation's worth of progress. So where are my medical tricorders?

Methinks somebody is fearmongering. I'll be the first to say cutting research funding is a dumb idea, but is it too much to ask that the former head of the NIH assess the situation based on the facts and not Chicken Little "the sky is falling" theater?

Exactly. Besides, in the past 20 years, no significant advancements have been made in practical medical practice. Sure, some scientists have come up with a few new ideas, but no real improvements have made their way to the consumer, and any new treatments that have, have been so ridiculously overpriced that nobody can afford them anyway (I've never seen insurance that covers 'experimental treatments'). Any new treatments (c'mon, you know you've seen a few headlines for breakthrough cancer treatments [slashdot.org] or c [slashdot.org]

These aren't real scientists asking that government money stick around, but lobbyists for companies that feed upon science funding. Scientists love more government money of course, but many scientists understand that far must be cut, especially in military spending.

Sequestration merely provides an opportunity to re-evaluate what is important. Our question should be : Do we decide "important" by consulting lobbyists or by looking at the work that gets done.

It was "the government shutdown" a few years ago. And all sorts of people got on their soap box and blamed everyone else for it. Now it's called something else, the "sequester". And again let's point fingers and blame. However none of that has to do with the real problem - the US is spending more money than it takes in, spending more money than it can print, even, and has been doing this for YEARS. They scream at the federal banks to keep interest rates near zero to "stimulate the economy" meaning that everyone must bear the cost of the devaluation including those smart enough to put their money to work, and then they wonder why all the wealth is leaving the US dollar.

The US will be buried under its Keynesian nightmare. I just hope it doesn't take the whole world with it.

The US is fighting an economic war with the rest of the world, and it is winning. We are essentially pushing for a global economy, but doing it by crashing every other country's economy. We can do this because the US is the largest economy, the US Dollar was accepted very broadly, still is (for now) the reserve currency, and has moderately retained its value in comparison to other countries. Despite all the money the US has printed through the recession (2-3 Trillion, note this is not the same thing as the US deficit or debt), it is not really a huge percentage of the real total US money supply (the US stopped releasing their numbers a few decades ago, but everyone estimates them). The estimated real total US money supply is ~70 Trillion, so 3 Trillion is only a 4% increase over 4 years. Even with the US debt of 16 Trillion, it could print all that money and repay every last borrowed cent and only devalue the currency by ~20 percent. Of course it won't do this because all that debt keeps other countries very dependent upon the US and the US economy. That debt gives the US a big stick in negotiations, though nowhere near as big as the US Military's stick.

If there's one thing politicians are EXPERTS at, it's convincing the general public that money must keep flowing in for any and all of the projects they voted for, or else dire consequences will result.

To step back and put these cuts into perspective.... Federal govt. is STILL spending something like $13 TRILLION dollars a year in deficit spending with the full effects of the sequester in place!

The primary reason Obama is motivated to scare up people to put a stop to this and "work out a deal" is because t

Not even remotely close to accurate. It spends approximately $3.8 trillion in total this year, and of that about $900 billion was originally going to be borrowed.

It's great to try to ensure all Americans have healthcare options available to them. But nobody has really tried, yet, to do anything about the massive (and constantly rising) COSTS of healthcare, which SOMEBODY gets the bill for, whether it's an uninsured individual or the insurance company covering that individual by govt. mandate.

Actually, RomneyObamaCare (I call it that because Obama basically took Mitt Romney's plan in Massachusetts and made it national) has various attempts to do just that, to curb the growth in medical costs, most notably in reducing spending on unnecessary procedures. It's unclear if they'll work, but we haven't even had a chance to find out yet.

The approach that was dismissed as unrealistically liberal, Medicare for All, did in fact mean that everyone would have had the benefit of Medicare's tough negotiating. It was a non-starter because the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals all opposed that.

Cut it all - Starting with congresscritter pensions and benefits (don't get distracted by their salaries, just a drop in the bucket compared to their real cost).

The problem with this whole sequester (aside from not going nearly far enough) comes from the whitehouse thinking themselves clever for having made an uncallable bluff - From assuming that the Republicans would never let the military suffer any real cuts. Well, whaddya know, in a surprising show of sanity, the larger principle of getting government spending under control trumped even their favorite special interest.

Yeah, we (by which I mean fiscal conservatives, not to imply I would ever voluntarily associate myself with the GOP) would all rather see the real problems addressed - End social security, end security theater, and cut HHS and the DOD in half (at least). But this current farce? Hey, better than nothing, but at least it counts as a start.

Really, how long are we going to swallow absolute FUD without question?

The sequester is $1.2 trillion....OVER TEN YEARS. So $120 bill a year (I've seen it reported as $85 bill for this year).

The idea - as promulgated by the spenders in Congress and White House - is that ANY cut in spending by the US gov't will radically and catastrophically affect (whatever service is important to the listener). This is a bald-faced lie.

This morning, a senior administration official claimed that sequestration would CANCEL all military service person training for the rest of the year (outside of actually-deployed servicepeople). Seriously? A 5% cut in budget cancels 75% of a training schedule?

One example: Obama/Tiger Golf Trip cost $989,207 to the Fed and $78,205 to local police...the average american household paid $1372 in income tax... So ~728 American households had to pay taxes for an entire year to fund the golf trip...

And yet we're crying that we can't cut anything from the US budget? Really?My understanding - I'm not an economist - is that if we simply STOPPED programmed-increases in spending for 6 years, the US budget would be balanced. That doesn't seem that painful, given that most American businesses (except Wall Street, I suppose) have suffered far worse over the past 5 years already.

On NPR this morning, they discussed the previous sequestration of 2% that happened in 1991. The bureaucrat they talked to discussed "how hard it was to implement this 2% cut in everything", using as an example a call he got from a Parks person, asking how they implement a 2% cut in service that scrapes bird shit off of channel buoys. His response was to "...only scrape 98% of the crap off".This, my friends, is what passes for both intelligent thought in government bureaucrats...either he (most likely) thought that was an ironic, humorous reply to what he felt was an unjust budget cutting (which it really wasn't) or he thought that was ACTUALLY a way to reduce his 'poop scraping' service costs by 2%.

As much as they try to make it so, it's pretty simple: expenditure cannot exceed income. Period, full stop. ANY OTHER SOLUTION IS GAME-PLAYING.

Oh, and for those with a party bias? I'll just remind everyone that this has been a problem for 50 years REGARDLESS of which party controlled Congress and the White House. It wouldn't be this bad, if both parties weren't generally colluding.

Yep, it turns out that a lot of military spending mirrors the rest of government spending, it gets sucked up in mandatory spending like pensions for service members, health care, etc. They cannot arbitrarily rewrite contracts either. So the amount they can actually cut gets concentrated on things they can control immediately like training, salaries, etc. That's why the cuts appear out of proportion to the total percentage cuts.

Actually, the sequester doesn't cut federal spending at all, or rather it cuts it only in the Washington sense of any reduction from projected baseline increases is a cut. In reality, even if the sequester goes through, the federal government will spend more every single year.http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/fairy-tale-spending-cuts [cato.org]

During all the Chicken Little propaganda blitz, not a mention in any of the media outlets about the > $100B in wasteful spending that the Government Accountability Office found. Go to WSJ.com and search for the article "Billions in Bloat Uncovered in Beltway". Last week Rand Paul returned $600k in surplus operating budget back to the Treasury, up from $500k he returned last year. I'm sure there are plenty of Congressmen(women) that could do the same. I'm sure they could if more of them actually had r

While I'm certain there is some truth that a small decrease in budget means some things might not happen (we're actually more resilient though... so I wouldn't say that "all things stop" like some are trying to say).... what about all the waste? I mean, you scratch your head about how our tax dollars are used to study arguably "stupid" things.... did you ever ask why that is? Do we really want those studies?

If I give a "gift" of government dollars to "you" and you don't really have a plan.. in order to no

Broadly speaking, for 2013 the across-the-board cuts will mean about an 8.4 percent cut in most affected non-defense discretionary programs, a 7.5 percent cut in affected defense programs, an 8.0 percent cut in affected mandatory programs other than Medicare, and a 2.0 percent cut in Medicare provider payments.

Bureaucrats have one goal in life. To accumulate more power and increase the size of their budgets. The thoughts of cutting waste and removing inefficiency never occur to their twisted minds.

If these microscopic little slowdowns in their budget increases (these are not cuts) have any effect on government services whatsoever, it is only because the bureaucrats implemented them in a way that would be most painful and most noticeable to the people.

If your spouse was a bureaucrat and you had to decrease household spending by 2.2%, the cut would be made by turning off the heat and electricity. The restaurant and entertainment budget that a sane person would cut first would not be touched. That way, the cuts would be as painful as possible so that you didn't DARE suggest a cut ever again.

It would be possible to cut the federal government by 33% without anyone but the bureaucratic parasites noticing.

If your spouse was a bureaucrat and you had to decrease household spending by 2.2%, the cut would be made by turning off the heat and electricity. The restaurant and entertainment budget that a sane person would cut first would not be touched. That way, the cuts would be as painful as possible so that you didn't DARE suggest a cut ever again.

This is actually a perfect analogy, except you missed slightly.

In this hypothetical household, both sides are arguing about cutting utilities vs. cutting entertainment, when the REAL problem is the fact they bought a house that is killing them on monthly payments, but they can't move. So while the actual problem expense is 10X bigger than anything they are looking at cutting, they go after crap like the monthly newspaper subscription and number of toiler paper rolls they buy.

Wrong, its the failure of leadership to get something done and the leadership is the President. If he cannot build a culture where people can agree to disagree but come out with a win-win then its his fault 100%.

I know, I shouldn't feed the trolls. But I do have to note that the Republican-controlled House has been passing budgets while the Dem-controlled Senate has not, which is why we've been running on continuing resolutions (and thus running up $1T per year in new debt). I also have to note that the Republican-controlled House has pushed through at least three bills to avoid the sequester, but the Dem-controlled Senate has killed all of them. I also have to note that the President and the Dem-controlled Senate have not put forward any plan except vague notions of raising more taxes on "the rich," which is their answer to every question, apparently, including "Where shall we have lunch." Moreover, I have to note that the President has threatened to veto all of the ways the Republicans have proposed to avoid the sequester. Which I must finally note was in fact the President's idea as a lever to get the Republicans in the House to agree to tax increases, not the last time that taxes were raised, but the time before that.

I don't trust the Republicans in government further than I can comfortably spit a rat, but take off your partisan blinders for a moment and look around. The world is both weirder and more wonderful than your blinkered view will allow in.

But I do have to note that the Republican-controlled House has been passing budgets while the Dem-controlled Senate has not, which is why we've been running on continuing resolutions (and thus running up $1T per year in new debt).

Those "budgets" gutted various provisions of the ACA, which Republicans are ideologically opposed to. That, and the for-profit medical industry has their collective dicks in various congressional asses.

Basically, those budgets aren't really in good faith, cutting services (you know, services for the citizens that the taxes are ultimately drawn from) instead of drawing more revenue from places like the wealthy and wall-street (the biggest fraud perpetrators in the history of the world).

I have to note that the President has threatened to veto all of the ways the Republicans have proposed to avoid the sequester

Yes, because they are all total BS. I could also counter-note your note and observe the Republicans have failed to budge from their stance against taxing the wealthy. We're at loggerheads and while both sides are responsible, raising taxes on the wealthy was a specific platform of Obama's re-election and thus I would argue the Republicans are thwarting the will of the electorate in this matter.

That's all well and good. Where is the Democratic budget that the House Republicans are supposed to compromise with? Or are they supposed to come up with a budget that magically meets all of the Democrats wishlist items?

the Republicans have failed to budge from their stance against taxing the wealthy.

I thought they already gave Obama the tax increase he wanted at the beginning of the year. Obama was claiming that if they gave him a tax increase during the "fiscal cliff" negotiations than the sequester negotiations would be all about budget cuts.

Yes, because [the Republican plans to avoid sequester] are all total BS.

I don't think that's true. There was one suggestion to allow the president to make the choice of what to cut [defensenews.com]. With such a small cut, it should be easy to find things that won't cause huge damage. Obama threatened to veto it, because of pork-spending, jobs, defense, and kids. Think of the kids.

I expect the real reason the GOP pushed to let Obama choose is so that they could turn around and blame him for any unpopular cuts. They tried to further abdicate responsibility, because it's Congress's job to choose funding levels.

Well, if the Senate would pass a budget then we would have some idea of what sort of budget might pass the Senate (and if it is reasonable to expect the House to pass such a budget). Since the Senate has not done so in somewhere around four years, the House has no way of knowing what kind of budget would pass the Senate and have reason to believe that the answer is that NO budget will pass the Senate. If the Senate will not pass any budget, how is the House supposed to pass one that has a chance to pass the Senate?

You're looking at the budget as a monolithic blob. There are programs that are already underfunded and some that are ripe with waste. As inexplicable as it might seem, some organizations don't have that much wiggle room. In some cases, contracts have been signed, people have been relocated, buildings have been leased. When you cut 5% across the board, you're taking the simplistic approach to a complex problem and hoping that someone else works out the details.

Given that nobody is willing to step up to the plate and cut entitlements then the only way is across the board cuts. The US is broke. People like to toss around the $16T figure for debt... its far, far, larger when the PV of the entitlement programs is considered in full. You could cut all discretionary spending and we would still be broke.

Personally I would be happy to see an across the board 30% cut to everything. That would set us back to... OMFG: 2008!

You mean the House Republicans who passed not one but two bills as alternatives to replace sequestration while the Senate Democrats did nothing (except to complain that the Republicans hadn't agreed to raise taxes even more) and when the President finally actually proposed something it included mostly more tax increases and a lot of "cuts" that were undefined.
Of course, the other part of your post that I have to challenge is the idea that cutting the amount that government spending increases will somehow "

You mean the House Republicans who passed not one but two bills as alternatives to replace sequestration

Republicans passed those bills in the 112th Congressional session.Which means those bills are dead right now, since we're in the 113th session.They'd need to be resubmitted and brought back for a vote if Republicans were serious about putting them into play.

The real problem is that Republicans think that cutting spending is the only way to fix the budget,despite the fact that taxes are at historic lows and austerity is actually a really shitty idea (see: europe).

*skip down to the last section if you don't want to read a bunch of political posturing

Given the massive amount they're spending over budget this IS a good thing. Blame congress as a whole for where the cuts are being made, but the cuts are good. This is no different than a city saying "if we don't increase taxes, we'll have to reduce police and fire presence." They neglect to mention they've paid themselves and pet projects FIRST when threatening to defund and cut vital services.

The Republican bills were complete pie-in-the-sky conservative fantasy that would NEVER have passed, and would have been disastrous if they did. The blame is on their shoulders for not putting forward anything that would have had a chance of making it. Those pieces of legislation were nothing more than symbolic gestures to pander to their base.

Those passed budgets were a sham, gutting services and preserving tax rates on the wealthy.

It all comes down to where the axe should fall, and given Obama was re-elected campaigning to raise taxes on the wealthy and preserve services for the middle and lower classes, the majority of the blame goes to the Republicans for ignoring what the MAJORITY of voters want to do.

The Bob Woodward thing was a bit overblown, fyi. Not really as mafia-like as it first seemed once you read the emails. (And I'm on the "Obama administration is fearmongering" side, to put my biases out there)